THIS IS THE PROCESS I USE TO TAKE PHOTOS OF MY EMBOSSED BEER BOTTLES

[UncleBruce]

Smartphones are very handy, quick, and for certain photos they are more than adequate. I have been using an actual digital camera for over 2 years now and this is my preferred choice for taking a great bottle photo (at least I think they turn out great ). My Canon EOS Rebel has a lot of advantages over a smartphone and bonus it takes stupendous photos. Let's begin.

• Using the camera to take bottle photos I use the camera's MACRO setting. This setting is for close up shots and will focus more on the bottle itself not the background because it uses a smaller aperture setting. There is also a PORTRAIT setting on the camera that works very much in the same manner.
• I use the highest quality image available in the camera settings. I never mess with this as I set it to the max when I first got the camera and I take all my photos even the personal ones using this setting.
• I like to take photos with a neutral background, but that is not necessary. I set the bottle at least a foot away from the background. The further away the object is from the background the less noticeable the background becomes because of the MACRO setting the camera is using.
• I prefer to take photos using subdued or indirect lighting so I take most of my photos on cloudy days or in the evening with the sun behind trees.
• Using the subdued light and the MACRO setting will require a tripod to keep the camera steady. This will nearly eliminate the chance of getting a blurry image. I have several different sizes of tripods for different occasions.
• Going one step further to keep the camera steady I take advantage of the EOS Rebel's ability to connect with my smartphone. I use an app Camera Connect to control the camera shot once I connect the phone to it. It is more complicated to explain than to do.
• I will set the camera and tripod close enough to the bottle so that the image will fill the viewing frame without having to zoom the camera lens in on the object. I use the zoom a little bit, but I try to keep that to a minimum.
• When I am done shooting photos I then import the camera's images, to my smartphone, via the Camera Connect app and then my phone is set to sync with the cloud and will automatically back up the images to the cloud (I use Google). I then can access the photos anywhere using the cloud.
• On my laptop I have a simple photoshop type program that I use to touch up, rotate and/or resize the photos, but this photo touch up can be done by using the tools on Google Photos where the images are stored.

That's about it. Experiment and see what works best for your needs. I have even done this inside my home and had pretty decent results. Hope you give it a try and let me know how it turns out.